WWF: Stop letting a small minority derail the plastics treaty

Zaynab Sadan is Global Plastics Policy Lead at WWF.

Countries are meeting in Geneva this week for the sixth time to try to finalise a treaty that must end plastic pollution, talks which have been deadlocked by a small minority of plastic- and oil-producing countries.

Will the majority of the world continue to allow them to railroad the talks, or has the time come for a new approach?

The last five rounds of treaty negotiations have attempted to be inclusive and arrive at key decisions by formal consensus. However, with the Swiss talks billed as the last round of negotiations, something must give if we are to conclude a meaningful treaty.

While the blocker countries say they want to build agreement, in reality they are demanding consensus as a way to compromise and water down ambition. Effectively, they have stalled, if not derailed, any meaningful progress on attempts to right the wrongs of plastic pollution.

Single-use plastic now accounts for 60% of global plastic production and 70% of plastic pollution. An effective global treaty could regulate this production and consumption.

Essential treaty measures, such as bans on certain products and chemicals and limits on production, already enjoy majority support, but countries banking on profiting from continued plastic production consider them a threat.

Traditionally, negotiators have aimed for consensus in multilateral agreements. However, as politics becomes more polarised, multilateralism is being eroded.

In the global plastics treaty, many oil-producing countries have been exploiting well-meaning intentions to block progress, denying other countries their sovereign right to form binding treaties to solve common problems.

The good news is that there are two other paths countries can take.

The first is voting.

A norm established by the international law system, and practiced by several global institutions like the UN General Assembly, voting has been used successfully in multiple negotiations such as the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Arms Trade Treaty in 2013, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea adopted in 1982.

Voting allows the majority to move forward while leaving the door open for others to join later. Voting embodies the spirit of multilateralism, facilitating collaboration to solve shared problems, even when not everyone agrees at first.

The second is for countries to agree a separate deal.

If there is a clear majority support for the plastics treaty, but a vote is not possible, countries have the right to collectively forge their own path.

This could be done by taking the treaty text to UNGA in September, where voting is well established or arranging a standalone diplomatic conference where the treaty can be adopted among the ambitious majority.

It is naive to think that more talking at the upcoming round in August will result in radical shifts towards unanimous agreement. So countries must decide: keep seeking consensus and agree on a weak treaty, or be ambitious and forge their own path.

Most countries want a strong binding treaty. At the last round of talks, Mexico mobilised 95 countries supporting a global phaseout of the most harmful products and chemicals of concern, Rwanda led 84 countries to declare a shared commitment for measures including a global target to reduce plastic production. At the UN Oceans Conference in Nice in June, 95 countries reaffirmed their commitment to an ambitious plastics treaty through a Nice Wake Up Call, led by France.

A treaty through consensus at all costs, dictated by the lowest common denominator, however, will never include the measures that the majority of countries want, and people and nature need.

Over the last eight years, WWF has worked with countries and stakeholders to identify the four most important global rules that can end plastic pollution: banning the most harmful plastic products and chemicals; global product design requirements and systems to transition towards a circular economy; financial and technical support for developing countries; and ensuring the treaty can be strengthened and adapted over time. WWF has counted support for all four global rules from at least 133 countries.

Let the global plastic pollution treaty be a turning point - not just for the health of ourselves and our planet, but for the sake of upholding multilateralism.